It's All Geek To Me - August 4th 2004

There has been lots of press recently about how the mydoom virus caused Google to fail – which mostly has demonstrated that reporters are frequently wrong but never in doubt.

I understand how trying to write an article about what occurred without even a rudimentary understanding of how all this works would be pretty difficult , but I must admit I wished those folks that had no idea what they were talking about would simply remain silent.

So despite the fact you have probably read about it in the paper let me assure you – Google in no way failed, in fact it behaved just as it should.

So websites are hosted on servers – special machines (hopefully not Microsucks brand) that are always connected to this network. Like all computers, web servers have maximum capacities and can only provide information to so many people at one time. One person asking for lots of info (downloading many files) takes the same amount of resources as a dozen people just looking at a web site.

The Internet itself (with routers) makes decisions about how information flows from point A to point B – and mostly these are dumb brute force decisions. Look again at the above picture – not hard to see there would be lots of ways from Miami to Los Angeles – if there was lots of traffic in Texas you might go by a route that was not so direct... but as that would make the trip take 6 small fractions of a second instead of 4, you'd never know it.

This gets into the difference between web hosts and some of the technical issues there. A local ISP is likely to keep it's web servers locally (in the building) and use the same basic connection to the web they use for dial-up customers. On the other hand a Tier One Data Center (like where KISS hosts sites) is located physically so that it is able to connect to several different backbones – this is called multi-homed and literally means that if one of those big roads should fail another is available to use.

Large scale websites like Google have no choice but to go beyond this – and they use a system of brute force also. Big sites use multiple data centers and have many copies of their website on the air. Most Google users never realize that the first search they make may have been handled by the LA data center and the next search they make is handled by the one in Miami – it is seamless and is meant to look like it is all coming from one web server.

There are even firms that specialize in allowing big companies to rent this sort of infrastructure on an as needed basis – like AKAMAI. The Victoria's Secret web lingerie show, the Olympics, the World Series – these are all good examples of where web sites need lots of power in many data centers but only for a short time. IBM recently launched a marketing campaign for their 'on-demand' services, which work in much the same way. Sites that have large needs but can experience big sudden hits also use these providers as backup – like CNN.

So Google is the king of this – they have the largest number of web servers on the air and the combined computing power of all the Google servers is staggering – it qualifies as a supercomputer.

In order to provide good service to everyone Google uses advanced network monitoring to determine how best to route requests and make sure everything is humming along.

So back to those not so bright reporters – remember them? A tremendous number of them got infected with the mydoom virus (by doing brilliant things like opening unexpected attachments from people they don't know while simultaneously not having updated anti-virus programs in place). The mydoom virus – in addition to doing several other nasty things – uses search engines to search for email addresses so it can send itself on to other people.

So, the Google system notices lots and lots of requests coming from a single corporate IP (aka the newspapers connection to the web) and does what it always does in those cases – it moves to block access for that single user so that service for the entire world is not impacted.

Google even has a nice little message they'll show you about it:

Forbidden
Your client does not have permission to get URL

Please see Google's Terms of Service posted at http://www.google.com/terms_of_service.html

<snip : helpful instructions from Google here>

Best wishes,
The Google Team

So – in a very nice way – Google is saying “stop beating on us, you'll prevent other people from seeing us”

And so – Google never failed or went down at all – but if you were a reporter on a corporate network that was very virus infected it is not hard to see how you might think it did.

Here at KISS we maintain three different connections to the web for our own use – and sometimes we can see a site on one of them but not on the others.

So, remember the next time you can't see a website – hit refresh and consider that it might be you and not them – try again a bit later and try to be generally impressed this whole thing works in the first place.

Happy Surfing.

Some cool links related to this topic:
http://www.internetpulse.net
http://www.touchgraph.com/TGGoogleBrowser.html
http://google-watch.org (obnoxious anti Google opinion but factually correct)

10 Things to do with

by Michael McGrath I teased at the end of my last Tasty Tip for this issue: 10 Things To Do With . I'm not going to give you 10 recipes, but I will give you 10 ideas for . Oh, and in case you wondered why some of my articles are Tasty Tips and not Tech Tips, I'm a former Executive Chef at two Four-Star restaurants and a Four-Star Hotel, all in an earlier life. I've finished one cook book, and am half-way through a second. None of the recipes in either involve . Anyway, here you go: 1. Kabobs . . . pineapple, onion, green and red peppers. Serve over rice. 2. , dusted with flour, dipped in egg wash and coated with bread crumbs, fried, and served with a Pineapple/Kiwi Salsa. 3. Shepard's Pie. Enough said. 4. slices, pocket created, filled with an apple and dried cranberry stuffing, baked, served with a simple pork gravy. 5. Wellington. Instead of pate and sliced mushroom, use a fig and rosemary paste. A red wine demi glace would be just lovely. 6. and Surf. Sauteed onions and lots of garlic, a little white wine, some beef stock, and little neck clams. When the clams open, add a slice of just to heat through, and serve over mashed potato. 7. Fried and cold pear chutney sandwich on Portuguese sweet bread. 8. , Bubble and Squeak. Look it up. 9. , , , , eggs and . 10.Filter it out with KISS's Anti- Email Defense. By the way, you can find the famous Monty Python skit here. Happy cooking.